1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method, system and program product for automatically creating managed resources. Specifically, the present invention allows a managed resource to be created at run-time based on a defined syntax for object descriptions and a description of the managed resource.
2. Background Art
As electronic commerce grows, businesses are increasingly implementing complex websites to foster growth and profitably. To develop and deploy integrated websites, developers often rely on software products such as WEBSPHERE, which is commercially available from International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y. Products such as WEBSPHERE allow a developer to create and manage websites using JAVA-based resources such as classes and objects. As known in the art, a JAVA class is a template or blueprint from which JAVA objects are created. Moreover, an object is a specific instance of a particular class. In general, a JAVA object includes data (i.e., instance fields) that is operated on by procedures (i.e., methods). It is also typical for products such as WEBSPHERE to work in conjunction with management programs such as JAVA MANAGEMENT EXTENSIONS (JMX). Specifically, JMX is a package addition to Java 2 Platform, standard edition (J2SE) that provides management and monitoring services of JAVA resources.
Unfortunately, current creation of JAVA classes and objects requires that a development phase be followed. That is, for a class to be created, a developer must manually generate the class, compile it, test it, etc. Since this procedure is often slow and tedious, the creation of JAVA classes and objects is typically inefficient. Although JMX allows new managed resources to be registered, it does not allow resources that are not part of the core program to be available in a distributed environment. Moreover, JMX still requires each managed resource to be manually created. Thus, no existing system allows a desired managed resource to be automatically created based on a description of the desired managed resource.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a method, system and program product for automatically creating managed resources. Specifically, a need exists for a definition file that sets forth a defined syntax for describing managed objects. A further need exists for an object file containing a description of a desired managed object. Still yet, a need exists for the description in the object file to set forth attributes of the desired managed object. Another need exists for the description to be validated based on the defined syntax in the definition file. If the description is valid, an additional need exists for a managed resource (e.g., a JAVA class) to be generated based on the description.